New York, Prime Minister Rama’s Address at the Meeting with the Albanian Community in Staten Island

 

Thank you all very much for this welcome!

To tell the truth, when they told me last night that a “big storm” was coming, we thought it might prevent you from gathering here. But it seems that you not only gathered; you also stopped the storm from doing what was forecast.

I am very glad to be here in Staten Island, where they say it is the only place in the world where you can find Ismail Qemali, Isa Boletini and Franklin Roosevelt standing side by side. That shows that, although we are in America, this is territory unofficially occupied by Albanians.

I am also very glad that we are here today to share some of the things that have happened over these years. It was here in Staten Island, in 2015, that I attended an Albanian dinner together with Hashim Thaçi. At that dinner, we discussed for the first time the idea of what, one year later, became the first Diaspora Summit in Tirana, where Hashim Thaçi and I were together again.

In the ten years since that summit, I believe many positive things have happened. The connection between Albania and the diaspora, and between the diaspora and Albania, had until then been based only on the money Albanian emigrants sent home to help their families survive difficult times. It has become a relationship in which much more happens. Bridges have been built across which interests and investments pass, and across which many Albanians return to their homeland, whether to co-finance projects with friends and relatives or to stay in Albania.

There is an extraordinary fact from these years that does great honour to the Albanian diaspora and places every Albanian emigrant on a special pedestal in our history. Ninety per cent of Albanian families have benefited at least once from money sent by the diaspora. Nine out of ten Albanians have received an education, put a roof over their heads or improved their lives thanks to you, thanks to a family member, relative or friend who stood by them in difficult times. This is a great honour.

As I said, we are no longer at the stage where the diaspora gave, Albania received, and the relationship ended there. We are at another stage. The diaspora is not only memory, nostalgia and solidarity; it is also an ever stronger connection and a partnership that has begun to develop. Today we have the institutions of the diaspora, coordinating councils and agencies that serve as bridges: the organs of an entirely new body we have built. We also have the summits, which help us take stock and make commitments.

The most recent Diaspora Summit produced a National Diaspora Strategy 2030. It covers governance and services, dialogue and the diaspora’s expertise, the economy and innovation, and language and culture for the youngest children.

We have begun creating a national diaspora register as a gateway for everyone who wants to invest in Albania, whether a little or a great deal. Most importantly, the change in this relationship has happened not only in what is visible, but also in people’s way of thinking. Today it is a much more inclusive, much more organic relationship. The eggs thrown at me a few nights ago were part of that too. They showed that active Albanian life, and engagement with political life and developments in Albania, now bring together Albanians in Albania and Albanians wherever they are. One of the egg throwers had even come from England to throw eggs. He could have come to Tirana, but he preferred New York. I hope he also had a good time with the New York police.

It was also rather nice that the leading officer in the security team subsequently assigned to deal with any eventuality was an Albanian serving in the New York police. So, thanks to the strong integration of Albanians into the life of this country, and to their strong interest in the life of Albania, I felt completely at home. The police and the protesters alike: just like in Albania. Super!

To make this picture of integration truly spectacular, Xhemo and the organisers welcomed me here with a pink cake bearing two flamingos shaped into a heart. I was exceptionally pleased—for myself, for the flamingos, for Xhemo and for everyone. We live at a time when Albania no longer suffers from the terrible reality that birds, animals and people are killed and nobody concerns themselves with them. We live at a time when people care about birds, leaves, butterflies, water and biodiversity, just as they do in any country that has overcome the great problems of survival and begun to face the great challenges of development.

When we began this journey together, Albania’s thought was, “It could be worse.” Thanks to this journey, the time has come when Albania says, “It could be better.” That is our daily challenge, because it is true: there is better. And it is entirely true that, together, we can do better every day for Albania and for Albanians.

After seeing that a few eggs had been thrown at me, Albania’s chief policeman, Pjerin Ndreu, came here urgently. Pjerin is one of Albania’s most successful mayors, although he lives with the great sorrow—which he never admits—of wondering why Lezha is not the capital. He told me: “Be careful. There are people from Korça in the hall, people from Mallakastra, people from Vlora—fine, all of them. But there are also people from Lezha here, and you must say something about them.” What can I say about the people of Lezha, other than lucky you to have Pjerin Ndreu, and lucky Pjerin Ndreu to have you.

But beyond the joke—which, in this case, contains much more than half the truth—the fact is that today’s Albania is no longer an Albania in need of aid. Of course, as in every country, there are families in Albania that continue to need help. But Albania itself, which until ten years ago resembled a person holding out a hand to ask for help, is today a person with arms open to welcome investment, partnerships and everyone’s experience, beginning with the experience of Albanians abroad. Today Albania has opened a new door: the door to its mountains. It is open to all those whose origins, roots and family histories lie in those mountains, and who have waited many years for the moment when they could relight the hearth in their ancestors’ home.

I believe you have heard good things and plenty of bad things about the Mountains Package. I am sure you have been told, as people say about everything else, that it was designed for theft, to seize the mountains or to take the mountains and carry them somewhere else. In truth, the Mountains Package was made for all of you who have a connection to those mountains and land there inherited from your ancestors.

Its sole purpose is to address a problem in the law, which has been unable to resolve the division of property in mountain areas. There, most property has been divided according to the old boundaries and by agreement between neighbours. The law does not provide for this, and that is why the people of the mountains have not accepted it.

The Mountains Package therefore allows anyone to go to the relevant municipality with a request to develop their property. The municipal council posts the request publicly for one month to see whether any neighbour or other claimant says that the property does not belong to the applicant. If no such claim is made within that month, the process can begin to rebuild the old house, build an agritourism business or establish a farm—always in support of the mountain economy.

I have always believed, and believed even more strongly after seeing Albania’s mountains up close, that although tourism in Albania is associated with the sea, the golden moment for Albanian tourism—the moment when Albania reaches the heights of its potential—will come when the mountains become part of its tourism industry, as they are in Austria, Switzerland and other countries whose mountains share many of Albania’s characteristics.

That is why I spent a little longer on the Mountains Package: to assure you, first, that it was made for everyone who owns property there. It was made for no one else. No other investor can gain access to those properties unless that investor is your partner and you wish to involve them.

Of course, any property owner who wants to bring in a partner from among the friends and relatives they have here is welcome to do so. Turning the mountains into a source of prosperity, too, is essential to taking Albania’s economy further.

Bear in mind that the country the first emigrants left when they came to America more than thirty years ago was a country with less than 200 dollars per capita. Today, thanks in part to you, that figure has risen 75-fold in 35 years. My ambition is for it to have risen 100-fold by 2030. So we still have another 25-fold increase ahead of us to achieve together.

And if today we have reached 12 million foreign visitors coming to Albania, our aim, in order to increase Albanians’ incomes, is to bring that number to 20 million. After that, it will be for the younger generation to raise it further.

But more important than the number of visitors at this stage, as Pjerin also says, is having more quality investors, so that we have more tourists who bring greater value during their stay. The typical tourist in Albania today has a middle or low income. What we lack is the high-income tourist who represents what is called high-value tourism.

That is also the aim of the much-discussed project—the famous, but unfortunately also infamous, project, because of so many lies, manipulations, attempts at denigration and political exploitation: the Sazan project and, alongside it, the Zvërnec project. The project has the potential to bring more than four billion euros to Zvërnec alone. Four billion euros into an economy worth 27 billion euros in total. You can do the sums better yourselves. It is an extraordinary project for Albania.

Of course, we are fully aware that, just as it is extraordinary in scale, ambition and financial terms, it is also exceptionally delicate in terms of its balance with the environment. For that reason, we are working very intensively to produce a detailed, professional environmental impact assessment meeting the highest international standards. We want to understand exactly what the real risks are.

Finally, so as not to take up more of your time, I want to thank you with great respect and gratitude for the time you have given me and all of us. I have not forgotten that today is a day off. Unlike in Albania, where working days include plenty of coffee breaks, working days here include few—and the coffee you do have is that terrible American coffee, which is a hardship in itself. So I understand very well what it means for you to spend two or three hours of your actual day off listening to talk about Albania. I am very, very grateful to you. Thank you very, very much.

I hope that when you come to Albania, the chief policeman will give us the chance to meet. But even if he does not, I am sure he will treat you better than I would. I also want to thank Xhemo in particular. He was dressed like an American politician today; standing next to you, I look like the hotel guard. Xhemo, I very much hope that suit and the care you take with your appearance bring you success in American politics, because appearance is highly valued here. I also thank you very much for your dedication and for organising this gathering.

I know that some young men from Ulcinj are here with you, because I was told beforehand. Dritan from Montenegro, the former prime minister and my dear friend—the only citizen of the world in the Balkans—called me. “Listen,” he said, “where you’re going, into that Albanian ‘wave’, be careful: there’s also a little ‘foam’ from Ulcinj.”

So thank you very much, Xhem. Thank you very much to the friends here.

 

Thank you very much to the association that made this warm, brotherly gathering possible. You know I have this conviction: at the end of the day, whatever the men of Albania manage to do, they do it only because the women of Albania stand behind them. So if Albania’s men have done some great foolish things, imagine what they would have done without the women.

That is why I want to thank all the ladies present here. I wish every good thing for their families, every good thing for their children, and the very best for their husbands. Take good care of them. I know they are difficult, but they can be good when they need to be. And pay no attention when they act tough, because in their hearts they tremble with fear of you.

Thank you very much!